


maybe this time (he'll stay)

by estel_willow



Series: not in this world (or the next) [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Reality Hopping, Sequel, handwavey science, mikey deserves nice things, sci-fi shennanigans, this definitely has a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: When he wakes up he’s cold. The sheets are wrapped around his waist and he doesn’t have a shirt on and it takes him an unnecessarily long time to push himself upright and identify his surroundings. As consciousness creeps in along with its twin sister, wakefulness, Mikey groans aloud and flops back onto the bed.He’s in his house. He’s in his bed. He’s still alone.The grief rockets through him like a lance to the heart. He rolls over and presses his face into the pillow to process the way that disappointment swallows him, settling over his shoulders light a weighted blanket.No more.Sequel to not in this world (or the next)
Relationships: Alex Manes/Kyle Valenti (in another reality), Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: not in this world (or the next) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1732876
Comments: 29
Kudos: 201
Collections: Roswell New Mexico ▶ Michael Guerin / Alex Manes





	maybe this time (he'll stay)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's been a long time coming, man. I re-read nitw the other day and realised that Mikey Evans ~~PHD~~ deserves the damn world. So I wanted to give it to him. This is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine.
> 
> Huge thanks to beamirang, insidious-intent and sadie and beka for encouragement, flailing and generally being awesome.
> 
> If you haven't read not in this world, this won't make any sense, so I'd suggest reading that first.

The first thing he does is go home. Not to the place that he lives, he goes _home_. To his mom’s. He waits anxiously as he hears her fumble with the lock and when the door opens and she’s standing there with her eyebrows lifted and a look on her face that tells him she knows what he needs even when he doesn’t, he crumbles and hides his face in her shoulder. He lets her hug him, lets her hold him firmly against her and doesn’t correct her when she tells him she knows it’s hard. He doesn’t correct her when she cups the back of his head and kisses his temple and tells him it’s okay, that one day the pain will ease, that one day he’ll be able to think about it without feeling like he’s crumbling into nothingness.

He doesn’t tell her that he’d held Alex in his arms less than twelve hours ago. He doesn’t tell her that Alex grows up to be a strong, handsome man. He doesn’t tell her that he crossed the inter-dimensional boundary as a result of alien technology which proves that the theorem he’s been working on for the better part of a decade is real and tangible and _that there are other realities out there_. He doesn’t tell her that, for the briefest of moments, he’d considered staying there.

No, Mikey Evans does none of that. He clings to his mom and he cries and when she tells him she loves him, he believes her.

***

Kyle bumps Mikey’s shoulder with his own and then slings his arm around Mikey’s shoulders, tugging him into a hug. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “I can’t-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mikey mutters, feeling his voice hitch. The grief feels real all over again. It hurts. It’s fresh. He’s mourning the loss of Alex for a second time.

Kyle understands. Kyle’s always understood. He doesn’t offer to reminisce and - unlike Isobel - he doesn’t ask about the other reality, doesn’t ask about what it was like to walk in the shoes of another Michael. 

“Okay,” he concedes. “But can I at least check you’re physically okay? Who knows what might have happened to you after an interdimensional holiday?”

Mikey just lets Kyle manhandle him into a chair and lifts his lips into a wry smile. He pushes his glasses up his nose. They sit in silence, Kyle waiting Mikey out in a game they both know so well. It doesn’t take Mikey long to feel uncomfortable in the lingering silence, compelled to fill it and falling into the trap Dr Valenti had set for him.

“It was,” he starts, not even sure how to put what happened into words but knowing he _needs to_ , “I saw Alex.”

Kyle’s hands don’t falter. They don’t shake. Kyle’s impressively calm as he says, “I know,” and then, with only the slightest waver in his voice, “do you want to tell me about him?”

Mikey swallows and nods and he’s proud of the way that his voice hardly shakes.

***

Isobel doesn’t let him go for an hour. She’s got his head in her lap and Noah’s making brownies - Mikey’s favourite - and she’s filling him in on gossip he missed. He can feel the way she’s desperate to apologise to him. It hangs in the air as she brushes her fingers through his curls and tells him that she’s glad he’s back because the other him had an attitude problem. Mikey doesn’t tell her that’s because he lives in a trailer and is lonelier than anyone should ever be. 

She looks at him with wide eyes when he tells her that he has to go (with a plate of cookies to guard with his life on the passenger seat of his truck and brownies carefully packed in foil resting on his passenger seat) and tells him she’s sorry she didn’t notice sooner. 

He tells her it’s okay, and that he wouldn’t have expected her to. The timing was off, and he always isolates himself around this time of year. He hugs her goodbye and lets her cling to him. If he clings back, she doesn’t say anything about it, he knows she’s feeling a swirling guilt deep inside that he can’t do anything but try and hug out of her. She tells him that she loves him and he smiles, kisses her forehead and tells her, quietly, “I love you too.”

***

He makes the rounds, he checks in on Liz and his niece, swings in on Arturo and Rosa - Maria, as always, is at work - so when he rounds on the Pony to sit at the bar opposite his best friend, he’s not in the least bit surprised to find that she’s expecting him.

She hugs him and he sinks into it, feeling like he’s coming home and is safe at last. Maria’s aura, the inexplicable ability that he’s tried - and failed - to scientifically explain over the years is warm and reassuring. She cups his cheek and kisses his forehead and it makes him feel dopey with affection for her. 

“You know-”

“I know, Mikey,” Maria reassures him, fixing him a soda water and lime with a slice of orange. As she slides it across the bar, she fixes him with a look. It’s understanding but concerned and Mikey lets out a breath. She’s read him. He hates it when she does that. “You’re leaving again.”

It’s not a question. 

Mikey tugs on his collar a little and wrinkles his nose. He smooths his hand over the bar and picks at the imaginary lint on his jeans. Anything that stops him from making eye contact with her that lasts longer than a couple of seconds. He swallows and shrugs his shoulders.

“That’s not possible, Maria, and you know it.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” she tells him, catching his hand before he can lift his drink to squeeze his fingers. Mikey feels his ears go pink and he just shrugs again. “What’re you planning on doing? Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Mikey admits softly, his voice breaking a little as he lifts the glass to his lips. “I just want to make things right.”

“You can’t play God, Michael,” Maria warns and he lets out a miserable sound, his breath hitching and she makes that clicking noise with her tongue and sweeps around the bar to gather him into her arms. “Mourn him again,” she murmurs against his hair, fingers smoothing through the curls, “but you have to let him go.”

“I _can’t_.”

***

The first attempt is a disaster. Mikey wakes up in a dilapidated building which is crumbling around his ears. Long, hunched over, pale monsters stalk the streets outside and there’s no sign of life anywhere. Mikey makes the mistake of crying out in horror when he sees them and they swarm to find the source of the sound, screeching and wailing inhumanly as long taloned fingers scrabble against shattered concrete. The machine kicks in and saves his butt with seconds to spare, but the edge of his shirt’s shredded.

The second attempt is less of a disaster but no more successful. He wakes up in a reality where he and Alex never met. He runs into him in the Crashdown and after a moment of breathlessness where Alex looks at him almost like he knows him a small person barrels into Alex’s side and hides her face in his hip and calls him _daddy_. Kyle comes up behind him and rests his chin on Alex’s shoulder and says _Who’s your new friend, Lex?_ and Mikey calls himself a passer-through and takes his coffee to go. 

The third and fourth attempts are equally crushingly disappointing; in the third, Alex went to college in California and never came back and in the fourth, Alex is still at war and is a decorated… whatever the next three ranks up from Captain are. He’s a career soldier and he’s never coming home. In both of those realities, he doesn’t need Mikey - or Michael - and he doesn’t feel like he has a place there, even if his life in those realities doesn’t completely suck.

It takes Mikey two months of hopping between realities before he realises it’s never going to work. He drags himself to Sunday lunch with his family (which he’s never missed in the last two months) and listens to his mom telling him that he’s working too hard. He doesn’t correct her, and he doesn’t meet Isobel’s eyes when she tries to catch them to tell him that it’s okay because it’s not.

He’s never failed at anything in his life, he can’t start now.

He has to keep looking. 

He has to be doing something wrong.

He just needs to try harder.

***

The next few tries don’t even work and Mikey, in a moment of grief and frustration induced rage, nearly breaks the small device. He pieces it back together again two hours later, careful and sheepish, apologising to it over and over and leaving it on the table in his office as he’s reminded that his sabbatical is over and he has to go back to work.

It’s not an acceptance of failure, it’s an understanding that the immutable laws of the universe are conspiring against him to stop him from doing _something_ to butterfly-effect his way out of the miserable situation he’s found himself in. It’s acknowledgement of the fact that his grief is still the black hole in the center of his universe where Alex used to be, bright and glowing and warm, collapsed into a dark nothingness that swamps his thoughts. It’s understanding that maybe he has to accept that this is his reality.

Maybe.

But it’s not an acceptance of failure.

He doesn’t forget about the device. How could he? It constantly taunts him with his own failure to make it work. If the other Michael could do it, why not him? The thought’s maddening and it keeps him up on more nights than he cares to admit. Mikey keeps fiddling with it but doesn’t activate it again. He comes close, once, but he calls Kyle who comes over with beer. They sit on the couch in Mikey’s lounge and reminisce about Alex and their high school years until the small hours of the morning and though Mikey’s chest hurts, the pain’s a little lighter.

The next time he comes close, he calls Isobel. She and Max turn up at his door at two fifteen in the morning with burgers, fries and milkshakes and crowd him on the couch like they did when they were in the orphanage, limbs intertwined as they just basked in each other’s company and comfort. He recounts the whole story to Max who pretends that he’s not taking mental notes to turn it into a story all while doing his very best not to cling to his brother, failing to banish the memory of him suspended in a pod all but lost to the world. Isobel pets his hair and kisses his temple and they remind him that they love him and he promises them that it’s enough. 

Of all the things he doesn’t like about this situation, he hates that it’s made him a liar the most.

***

Seven months, two weeks and three days since (the last time he saw Alex) he came back - Mikey never meant to count but he can’t seem to stop himself - Mikey picks up the device again. It’s not dust-covered, he’s been careful to make sure that it’s well taken care of, but he is worried about the power source. When he taps the console shard it glows, but it isn’t as bright as Mikey remembers it being.

He swallows and fixes it to his wrist. Maybe he has enough power for one last jump. 

One final try.

There’s a note on his pillow that he’s written to his family, just in case he doesn’t come back.

 _I had to try,_ it says, _I love you._

He closes his eyes and activates the device. It thwums and hums and Mikey feels the world caving in around his temples as his ears pop.

***

Mikey opens his eyes and immediately closes them again. His head’s pounding like he’d done half a dozen Jagerbombs the night before. He hasn’t felt this rough isn’t the summer after high school when Valenti got his hands on the key to his dad’s liquor cabinet and proclaimed that they were having a party at the Evans’ since their mom and dad were away for the weekend (which was crashed spectacularly by his parents coming home early and finding teenagers strewn all over their home). He groans into the pillow and wets his lower lip, wishing that his mouth didn’t taste like something had died in it. 

He stumbles out of bed and trips over an open guitar case, knees hitting the floor with a bone-jarring thud and, slightly more awake - but no less hungover - Mikey scans the room to see that he’s in his teenage bedroom. There’s a lump under the covers, spiked black hair sticking out from underneath the comforter and black nail-painted fingertips curling in the pillow where Mikey’s head was a moment ago.

He can’t believe it, but it looks like Alex is in his bed. A teenage Alex is in his bed and his mouth tastes like death. 

As quietly as possible which - true to form - isn’t quiet at all, Mikey gets to his feet and stumbles to the bathroom down a corridor lined with photos of him and his siblings, places and events he recognises. The carpet’s got a slight stain just in front of the bathroom door from when he and Isobel both got food poisoning two years ago and she’d refused to share the bathroom with him while he was being sick and couldn’t make it to their mom’s en-suite. 

It’s all so familiar, the carpet gets replaced a year after they all move out to go and do their thing, live their lives. But the house looks just like it did when he was- 

He pushes the bathroom door open and stares at his reflection.

He’s-

No, this isn’t-

His eighteen-year-old face is staring back at him.

Mikey doesn’t even manage to grab the mouthwash before he faints.

***

When he opens his eyes, it’s to a gentle hand caressing his hair. He’s pillowed on a pair of thighs and there’s a bottle of water being gently nudged towards his lips. He protests for a moment but he hears a familiar gentle - and affectionate - huff from above him and lifts his unfocused gaze upwards to see Alex. He’s pillowed on Alex’s thighs, Alex’s fingers are carding through his curls and it’s Alex that’s gently trying to get him to drink.

Mikey can’t stop the way he reacts to Alex’s presence. Hungover and bombarded by teenage hormones that he’s long since forgotten how to deal with, Mikey (and he’s not proud of it) bursts into tears, much to his teenage boyfriend’s alarm. 

“Uh, Iz?” Alex calls, gathering Mikey up into his arms as best he can, “hey, hey it’s okay Mikey, it’s- it’s alright.” He ends up with Mikey sort of sitting across his thighs, face hidden in the hollow of his throat and rubbing soothing circles along Mikey’s back as he hiccups embarrassingly. “Ssh, I’ve got you.”

When Isobel comes into the bathroom without even knocking, she quickly detangles her brother from Alex’s arms and tells him that she’s got him now. Mikey’s reluctant to let go, he’s seen Quantum Leap; his time here is short and he has to do something to change the future, right? He has to, he has to do something that’ll mean the future’s changed and- and-

“Mikey,” Isobel’s voice is firm and Mikey realises that he’s been speaking aloud. She looks at him as he pulls back, her hands on either side of his face as she rubs her thumbs over his cheekbones, cupping his cheeks and looking at him intensely. 

“What did you take last night?” Max’s low rumble is filled with concern as he crouches down on Isobel’s other side, one hand on her shoulder and the other on Mikey’s. Now he’s surrounded by his siblings, he can feel Alex slowly letting go of him as Isobel shoos him away, leaving the bathroom and - he’s not proud of this either - but Mikey whines a little. “As cool as it’d be to be able to do what Sam Beckett can-”

“-it really wouldn’t,” Isobel interrupts, “being stuck jumping through time never being able to get home would be the worst thing I could possibly think of.”

Mikey just sniffles as they banter over his head. 

“But imagine the history! And when you did get home you’d have so much to talk about.” 

“Assuming you did get home.”

“Well, yeah, assuming you got back and weren’t stuck just bouncing from person to person forever.”

“Can you imagine waking up somewhere random like that? Just waking up in another time and another place? Ugh, no thank you.”

“I’ve done it.” Mikey says softly, which cuts Max off immediately. “I- I’ve- I’m-”

“Jeez, bud, no more Jose for you, are you sure you didn’t take anything? I’ll kill Valenti if he-”

“What? No that’s not- it- damnit, I just- No, Max, I have to- I’m not- there’s- I don’t have time to explain, really- I need to talk to Alex.”

Mikey wrestles himself away from the caring - but overbearing - hands of his siblings and stares at himself in the mirror for a moment longer. Wow, he grew old. He’d almost forgotten how he looked at this age, even if Alex- Alex is burned into his brain, indelibly carved into every part of Mikey that could possibly hold another human being. 

He grabs the mouthwash and quickly swills it around his mouth and he can hear both Isobel and Max scoffing at the implication that ‘talking’ was definitely code for an action that involved much less words. He doesn’t say anything to them to either confirm or deny his intentions - but he’s a grown adult in a teenager’s body so there will be no touching of any bases - and just leaves the bathroom on shaky legs. Their protests about how they should talk to mom and dad and that he shouldn’t leave because there’s something wrong with him fall on deaf ears.

The mintiness of the mouthwash is burning his tongue a little, but that’s okay because he can work with that. It’s grounding. Something to tell him that he’s really here, he’s not just finally cracked and lost his mind. As he walks back to his room to see Alex sitting on the edge of the bed looking worried and a little hurt - which is fair, Isobel pretty much chased him out after all - Mikey’s first instinct is to cuddle him close and tell him _everything_. His second instinct is to turn right around and walk back out of that door and hide in the bathroom until his mom makes Alex leave and he can turn his room upside down to look for the device that wasn’t attached to his hand when he woke up. He needs it, otherwise he can’t get home, and he can’t stay here; he might have Sam Becketted into this past or… whatever this is but he can’t stay here. He has to go home. 

He’s staring at Alex and he knows he is. He can feel himself sweating anxiously. It’s not attractive. Mikey wonders what on earth Alex ever saw in him at this age and feels a pang in his chest at the reminder that Alex doesn’t get to meet Dr. Michael Evans, that he doesn’t get to attend Mikey’s graduation ceremonies because Alex doesn’t come back from the war.

His breath catches and Alex is on his feet in an instant, arms tight around Mikey’s shoulders. It’s easy, it’s familiar. He sinks into the embrace and hides his face in Alex’s neck. He feels Alex’s fingers carding through his hair, the other hand gently rubbing between his shoulder blades, trying to reassure him even though Alex - sweet, perfect Alex - doesn’t know what’s going on.

If he’s completely honest, Mikey doesn’t really know either. A part of him feels like this is nothing but a dream, some kind of messed up result of him whacking his head too hard, but it’s felt pretty real so far and if it is, then he can’t waste this opportunity. 

“I’m okay,” he manages, voice quiet and trembling, letting Alex guide him to the bed where they sit down heavily. Alex moves first, flops backwards and then tugs Mikey with him until he’s sprawled over Alex’s chest, their legs intertwined. He can feel Alex’s heart beating underneath his ear, the world tilts slightly with each rise and fall of his chest. 

The quiet hangs in the air: Alex is waiting patiently for Mikey to say something, knowing that eventually the words rolling around his head will explode out of him. Mikey knows that too, he’s dying to tell Alex the truth, to tell him everything but he can’t. He can’t risk Alex looking at him like he’s gone insane, like he’s playing some kind of a joke and not taking him seriously. 

He can’t risk Alex still going off to war.

His arm tightens where it’s flopped over Alex and he feels the fingers carding through his hair gently come to a stop.

“Lex?”

“Mm?”

“Have you thought about what you’d do with your life if you… didn’t join the Air Force?”

Alex is quiet for a moment and then snorts, softly. “Not really. It’s been pretty clearly laid out for me anyway. Follow everyone into the military, do my time and then… find a career when I get out? I’m pretty sure I can do college credits while I’m doing active service, Mikey, so it’s not like I’ll come outta this some jarhead without prospects.” 

Mikey shifted a little, weight on his elbow as he rested his chin on Alex’s chest and looked up at him. He felt his heart clench, that same feeling he’d always had whenever he looked at Alex, the rush of warmth and affection and overwhelming _love_. 

It takes his breath away. 

He swallows, meeting Alex’s dark eyes with his own and seeing the unspoken question there. Mikey presses a kiss to the t-shirt clad chest and lifts his shoulders. 

“I bet your dad won’t be too mad at you for wanting to forge your own path, you know.” 

Alex snorts again softly and brushes his fingers through Mikey’s hair again. He sort of shrugs that weird shoulder wiggle that’s the equivalent of a shrug when someone’s lying down and hums.

“Why? You’ve never had a problem with it before.”

Mikey pulls away and sits up. Alex chases him in a heartbeat. Mikey had almost forgotten how tactile Alex used to be, how he was always touching Mikey, whenever he could. It makes his breath catch again, guilt and grief crashing on his head like an icy wave and he grimaces, leans forward and rests his face in his hands trying to just breathe. 

“Mikey?” 

He hates worrying Alex. He always has done. He hates that he’s wasting whatever time he has here with Alex by getting stuck in the quagmire of his own emotions. He just- He’s just missed him so much. Being near him again, near _his_ Alex, is overwhelming. More overwhelming than he thought it would be. 

He doesn’t know if he’ll survive waking up from this. Two Alexes, two Alexes he’s had and held but can’t keep.

“Just- just th- think about it, will you?” he asks, trying not to sound like he’s begging but he fails miserably. His hormones are everywhere, god, he didn’t miss this. “Please?”

Alex presses a kiss to the back of his neck and leans heavily against Mikey. 

“Please?”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex murmurs, pressing another kiss against the nape of his neck which sends goosebumps prickling along his skin. “Okay, Mikey.” He feels, more than hears the gentle addition of “love you” that’s murmured a moment later.

He smiles, relieved that Alex can’t see how sad it is or how his eyes burn with tears.

***

He starts to feel peculiar during breakfast. There’s a tugging near his navel, something that makes him feel dizzy. It’s like he’s drunk too much and eaten greasy food (a combination everyone knows doesn’t work for him) and the queasiness makes him push the strawberry covered waffles away. 

“Rough night?” Anne asks with a small smile. She’s looking between him and Alex with that _look_ that Mikey remembers. He remembers what’s coming next, too, after everyone leaves. The lecture of responsibility, how they shouldn’t have had a party. 

“Something like that,” he mutters. “Rough morning too, mom, but I’m fine. It- yeah, I’m fine.”

He feels a hand squeezing his thigh. Alex’s thumb brushes over his kneecap and Mikey lets his whole body just sway to the side. By the time Isobel and Max have come down - both of them still looking at him like he’s grown a second head and is possibly having a psychiatric breakdown - Mikey’s appetite has totally disappeared. Max just reaches over and devours the waffles that Mikey didn’t want. Isobel kisses the side of his head and tells him she loves him and that they’re going to _talk_.

Mikey’s stomach swoops again.

***

The lecture doesn’t come, or if it does, he isn’t a part of it. Whether that’s because Isobel and Max told their mom he had a bad trip or a rough night or because just being here is creating fluttering ripples through time is open to debate. Mikey’s starting to sweat about the reality of what’s happening: he’s here in the past and he’s messing with it. What impacts might that have on the future? What happens if he goes home to a place he doesn’t recognise?

The Butterfly Effect is a real thing. It’s a tangible reaction to the manifestation of chaos. It’s a ripple effect and Mikey doesn’t want to be the butterfly flapping his wings at the end of his senior year to return to being nearly thirty in a hurricane. 

He doesn’t look for the device right away, though. Instead, he trails outside after Alex and lays on a blanket in the backyard, staring at the sky and listening to his boyfriend playing acoustic versions of his favourite songs. The clouds are overhead in shapeless wisps and Mikey can’t shake the gnawing feeling in his gut that the next time he closes his eyes, it’ll be over. He’ll be back in his living room sitting on his couch holding a battered photo album in his hands having finally lost his mind.

“-you think?”

“Huh?”

Alex laughs and the sound’s a balm to his whirring mind. He plays a couple of melancholy chords, fingers plucking the strings and Mikey tips his head to look at Alex.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex says quietly, which makes Mikey roll over onto his stomach, wriggle closer so he can rest his chin on Alex’s outstretched leg, chin resting against the denim. “You’ve been acting weird. I know we drank a bit too much last night but-”

Mikey chews his lower lip. “It’s not that.”

“What is it then?”

The guitar gets put to one side and Alex beckons him closer. Mikey goes willingly, resting his head on Alex’s thigh and closing his eyes as fingers sink into his hair, mindful not to get the rings caught on his curls. 

“I just-”

He hesitates. He can’t tell Alex the truth, that’s not how it works and he has no idea what happens to his teenage self when this is over. He can’t act too weird because he has to explain his own actions later on when this is all over. He’s trying not to think about what it means if he gets home again, if he fixes things and goes home does that mean he never swaps realities? Does it mean he’ll have to deal with two timelines? What if he can’t fix it and has to go home to the inevitability of a fixed point in time that is Alex’s death? 

His head hurts.

“I’m just worried, I guess,” is what he says instead of blurting out that he’s worried that Alex’s trip to the Middle East is the destruction of Mikey’s Gallifrey. “About you being out there, when you’re deployed.”

“I might not be,” Alex soothes, though they both know that’s not true. He purses his lips for a moment and then just looks down at Mikey. “Even if I am, you know I’ll always come home to you.”

“You can’t promise me that.”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound so hurt. It just does. It doesn’t make it any less true. Alex blows out a breath.

“I know you’re scared. I’m scared too. Like, what if I get that call and something happens to me when I’m out there and I can’t get home? What if someone gets a lucky shot? But, Mikey, the risk’s heightened by me being out there but it’s not gone. I’m just gonna do one tour then I’ll be home.” His lips curl up into a smile, “I’m a Manes man, after all, we all have to do our bit for our country.”

Mikey tries not to compare the genuine warmth in the smile that crosses Alex’s face when he says that with the bitter, resigned one that sat on the face of his alternate-reality counterpart. Being a Manes was a source of pride for his Alex, not shame, and Mikey’s lingeringly heartbroken for the pain that other Alex felt. 

“I know.”

And he does. The Air Force is in Alex’s blood and the pride he feels in being part of that isn’t something that Mikey can take away from him.

“Is that why you asked me what I’d do if I wasn’t gonna join the Air Force?”

“Maybe?”

Alex chuckles again and flicks Mikey’s nose.

“Well, unless you’ve got a crystal ball, no one really knows how the future’s gonna go.”

It’s like a lightbulb goes off in Mikey’s head. He knows what to do to fix this. His eyes light up and he pushes himself up right, tugging Alex down into a kiss as he does. It’s clumsy and awkward and the angle’s wrong but it’s perfect.

“You’re a genius. I gotta-” he waves his hands and Alex just looks at him perplexed and bewildered but he just smiled and nodded and waved after Mikey as he tripped over his feet and ran back inside.

***

Isobel comes into his room a couple of hours later. Alex has gone home and Max is with Liz sitting in the love seat on the porch, planning their trip. She’s bored and worried and the two are never a good combination. He’s been writing in a journal since he shot upstairs and doesn’t hear the knocking at the door until it’s almost too late.

“Can we talk about what happened this morning?” she asks in a tone that tells him it’s not a question. 

Mikey pushes his glasses up his nose and closes the notebook, turning his chair away from his cluttered desk and waves his hand at her. She’s got that large, doe-eyed look that always makes him feel kind of guilty even though he hasn’t done anything. 

“It’s not- it’s nothing, Izzy, I promise.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“Am not.”

“Are too. What were you talking about, Michael?”

There it was: Isobel only ever used his full name when she was being Serious. He sighs heavily and takes off his glasses, going to sit next to her. She tucks him under her arm immediately, tipping her head against his and resting her chin there. She knows him too well: it’s always easier to talk when he isn’t looking at someone.

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. It’s _insane._ ”

“Try me.”

He’s quiet for a minute before he just shrugs his shoulders. Maybe it’s better she knows: she can help his oblivious self parse through the scrawled thoughts he’s left behind for himself. He tries not to think about the Butterfly Effect. He tries really hard not to think about what he’s doing to his future. He tries really hard not to think about how this is creating a paradox that might ultimately result in the known universe collapsing and-

“Mikey?”

Oh. Right. Isobel’s waiting for him to speak. Her hand’s hovering over her flip phone, just waiting for a sign she needs back up. Max would abandon his planning session in a heartbeat if he needed to. Mikey waves a hand to tell her back up isn’t needed.

“Look, I- Something really bad is gonna happen to Alex and I want to stop it.”

She looks alarmed now and he realises that was completely the wrong thing to say. He gets to his feet to touch her shoulders, to keep her seated and stop her from storming out to go and fight whatever it is that’s going to hurt one of their best friends.

“No! Not now. I- Shit. Isobel just- just hear me out. The Quantum Leap analogy isn’t too far off, honestly. Don’t look at me like that. You said you’d listen. Something really bad’s gonna happen to Alex and I- some other circumstances allowed me to get hold of something that’s broken space-time for me to make a once-in-a-lifetime trip back here to try and change it. But I- I don’t know how and I don’t know how much longer I’ve got here to make a difference so I’m writing some key things down to prove that I’m not crazy.

“But it’s likely that when I go back to my time, that I won’t remember any of this and I’ll be confused and might not give Alex the message he needs at the right time and I- it means it’ll all be for nothing.

“I know it makes no sense, but in two days you’re gonna get a letter in the post that’ll make you happier than you’ve ever been. Mom and dad are gonna come home this evening with a new car and they’re gonna give you mom’s old one and Max dad’s. I don’t need or want a car ‘cause UNM isn’t that far away and I don’t mind the bus.

“Please Iz, just- just stay there. If I don’t do this, Alex is gonna die and I know you’re worried I’ve lost my mind, you don’t think I feel like that? But if you- if you knew something bad was gonna happen, or if you really _really_ thought something bad was gonna happen to someone you loved more than anything else in the world, wouldn’t you do anything to change it? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to save me or Max if you knew?”

Isobel sits there quietly and Mikey worries that he’s gone too far, that his blurted honesty is going to get his sister on the path to having him committed. He wrings his hands together and starts pacing a little, unable to contain his anxious energy.

“Mikey,” she says, “Mikey look at me.”

He does. Reluctantly. Even as a fully grown adult, he feels like his sister can look through him right into his soul. It still makes him squirm when he knows she’s searching for his sanity.

“Do you really believe this?”

He does. So he nods. And he knows that he looks miserable. 

She takes a breath and gets to her feet, graceful as a ballet dancer and cups his face with her cheeks, looking pained as he flinches a little.

“Tell me what you need me to do. I don’t understand it, but if it’s important to you, then I’ll help you. But if it- if this goes too far, if I-”

“You’ll believe me when mom and dad come back with a new car,” he interrupts, turning on the spot and picking up a post-it note that he’s scrawled the number plate down on. “And then when you get the letter.”

She presses her lips together and looks for all the world like she thinks this is the worst idea ever but she nods.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

***

He scribbles like a madman, notebook carefully filled with spoiler-free information that’s just enough to avoid ruining his future but enough to convince himself of what he has to do. He places the notebook away where he told Isobel he’d be hiding it and wipes his hands on his jeans.

God, he’s tired. His morning was a little hectic, after all.

He messages Alex - as was his custom as a teenager - and tells him that he loves him. The reply is instant and makes him smile even at the sharp, painful reminder that in his history he only has a finite number of these messages, pocketing his phone and heading downstairs as he hears the honking of a car horn.

He almost forgets about the device, Isobel had handled it carefully and snapped a photo on her phone which was grainy and unclear but it was another piece of evidence that he knew he’d need to prove it to himself, but at the last minute he snatches it up and slips it onto his wrist underneath his sweater, shouting that he was coming down the stairs.

Halfway down the stairs, near the photo of them at prom, he feels that tugging in his navel again. It makes him halt in his tracks and he stumbles, fumbles and trips, feeling a bone above his wrist breaking as he lands funny but instead of feeling the follow through of pain, he feels pressure in his temples and his ears feel like they’re filled with water and then-

Darkness.

***

When he wakes up he’s cold. The sheets are wrapped around his waist and he doesn’t have a shirt on and it takes him an unnecessarily long time to push himself upright and identify his surroundings. As consciousness creeps in along with its twin sister, wakefulness, Mikey groans aloud and flops back onto the bed.

He’s in his house. He’s in his bed. He’s still alone. 

The grief rockets through him like a lance to the heart. He rolls over and presses his face into the pillow to process the way that disappointment swallows him, settling over his shoulders light a weighted blanket. 

No more. He can’t do it again. He can’t. 

He’s about to yank the covers back up over his head and curl up into a ball underneath sheets that smell of sandalwood and dumb sense memories when he hears footsteps and the low sound of a dog whining. He doesn’t have a dog, but this is definitely his room. Isn’t it?

He lifts his head from the pillow and squints at the side table. Definitely his side table.

“I told you,” a familiar voice says, affectionate smile wrapping around the words as Mikey’s nostrils are assaulted by the smell of his favourite brand of coffee, “grading papers until 3am is really bad for you.”

***

Mikey’s died. He’s sure of it. He’s actually died and this is heaven and that’s the end of it. He’s never believed in life after death or any kind of esoteric system designed to give people hope and closure and something to look forward to but right now he’s ready to apologise to whatever deity it is that let Alex wait for him in the afterlife. 

Alex is staring at him staring back and the dog whines again until it - he? she? - gets bored of not being the centre of attention and disappears out the door, tail wagging in distaste, making sure to knock over a pile of papers as it passes. He only sees it moving out of his peripheral vision because Alex is standing in front of him.

Alex. Alex Manes. His Alex Manes with tousled hair and morning stubble. He’s got coffee in his left hand and his ring’s catching the-

His ring-

Mikey looks down at his left hand to see a silver band resting on his ring finger. He knows it’s not possible but he can feel the metal against his skin, warmed by his own body heat, tarnished slightly from years of wearing it, tiny scratches in the surface of the metal from where he’s tapped it against lectern stands at his lectures or worried it as he’s been waiting at the airport for the plane to take off. When he twists it the movement’s as natural as it should be, having been on his finger for seven years ever since Alex came home from-

He blinks, vertigo sweeping through him even as he sits down, sits still, waits for the punchline. It doesn’t come. There’s no cosmic joke, no canned laughter, no one jumping out of the closet with a video camera waiting to see the look on his face when the crushing reality of this hits him. 

Opening his mouth to say something, Mikey’s struck dumb by the sudden, violent cluster headache that causes his vision to white out, heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. He hears Alex swearing, the coffee being placed down carefully before arms were coming around him, squeezing his upper arms and muttering something about how this hasn’t happened in a really long time.

Alex’s voice is drowned out by the roaring of blood in his own ears, the sensation of his brain turning itself inside out, a sudden, unexpected update on hardware that wasn’t ready.

_The dog’s name is Sally, Mikey bought her for Alex after their third wedding anniversary because he was travelling more and Alex needed to keep the exercise up to ensure that his back injury didn’t trouble him any more. She was the cutest golden retriever puppy there and when Mikey crouched down she commando crawled over and then flopped onto her back, licking at his fingers._

_+_

_They’ve been living together since Mikey graduated UNM. Alex was injured in the line of duty but an anonymous tip resulted in the IED that would have obliterated his convoy being caught by the advance scout team, saving the entire squad. His injury wasn’t serious but aches when the weather’s cold._

_+_

_They got married in the summer, the warmth meant that his old wrist injury didn’t hurt (but was still the subject of more than a few jokes amongst his friendship group) and Alex’s back was as ache free as it could be. Alex looked radiant in his suit and Isobel cried as they walked down the aisle together. She was standing next to Noah, his smile bright and proud and perfect. Liz bounced her daughter on her hip during the ceremony to hush her as Hunter had taught her the word ‘boobs’ a week before and it was her favourite thing to say._

_They danced together until the sun went down, surrounded by their friends and family._

_+_

_The social worker signed the paperwork last week to let them progress through to the next stage of the adoption process. Her smile was warm and caring as she shook Alex’s hand and thanked him for his service, and how she told them that she was positive they’d make excellent parents and she was more than happy to recommend for them to proceed._

_+_

_Mikey put the phone down, breath hiccupping as he finished submitting an anonymous tip through a friend and a series of backchannels and hoped that he wasn’t going insane._

_+_

_Alex stepped off the plane in July that year with a bright smile on his face and his arms wide. Mikey ran into them like the star of his very own romcom and kissed Alex right there on the tarmac. Alex, who hadn’t officially come out to his squad, didn’t care._

_To their credit, neither did they._

He crashes back to reality with a bump, nose bleeding but pain receding as quickly as it had come. Alex has a tissue held underneath Mikey’s nose and his hand’s cupping his cheek. Those eyes are filled with concern and he’s searching Mikey’s gaze for… something. But Mikey doesn’t give him an answer, he just surges forward and yanks Alex into a kiss that, for him, has been eight years in the making.

Alex doesn’t ask him why he cries afterwards, not until much - much - later, but his phone buzzes with a message from Isobel that says _You did it. I love you._

And when later finally comes Alex has dealt with Mikey having impulsively asked for a week off work and asking if Alex can let Forrest man the shop for a while so they can just spend some time alone and reconnect. When later finally comes, they’re out in their own cabin on the land that used to be part of Foster’s Homestead looking up at the stars, he asks the question he’s wanted to ask since they were nineteen and three quarters.

“How did you know?”

“Know what?” Mikey asks, wriggling a little and lifting his hand to point out a constellation. 

Alex is quiet for a moment before he just lets out a slow breath and kisses Mikey’s jaw to pull his head from the stars. “About the IED.”

Mikey lets out a slow breath and turns his head, shifting a little and looking out at the desert. It stretches endlessly ahead of them, wild and dangerous but full of promise. Full of _life._

“It’s kinda crazy.”

“Try me.”

He takes another breath and thanks Michael Guerin for this moment, looks up at the same stars he knows Guerin can see and hopes that he’s happy wherever he is. That he’s curled up with Alex and living the life he deserves after having felt so much pain. 

Alex is looking at him hopefully, wrapped in a blanket and the light from the fire is making shadows play along the sharp lines of his cheekbones and Mikey’s so in love he can’t breathe.

“Okay.”


End file.
